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Comment

"It doesn't work"
-"You need the latest version of Pidgen"
"Where can I download that?"
-"You can grab the latest source at-"
"The latest what?"
-"The latest source code... it's at-"
"What? Is that the installer?"
-"The uhm... ah fsck it"
"Are you going to help me or not?"
-"It uhm... well you see..."
"What?"
-"You need to download the source folder over there"
"Okey... I opened the folder. What file do I need to click on?"
-"You need to open up a terminal first"
"A what?"
-"Are you using gnome?"
"What is Gnome?"

And so on and so forth...

-"Why are you using Linux?"
"Because it makes me cool"
-"So strip naked and sit in a freezer, its the same effect"
"...?"
-"...!"

Comment

What about KDE or Gnome is so important that you would need the latest release or would stop you from using any of the backporting services that exist?

The KDE 1 -> KDE 2 migration was rather important.

The point remains that any update to a central part of the system will force you to build everything that depends on that library from source. It's not just "building one application from source", it's building half of your system from source.

The power of Debian is in the high quality package repositories. The power of Debian stable is that the packages do not break things when you install them, which makes it attractive for servers and other situations where stability is important. The more you rely on the provided packages, the more stable and comfortable it is to use. You trade the bleeding-edge software for stability and maintainability.

Installing binary blobs into your kernel and compiling random stuff from source (and recompiling it over and over every time there is a security update) defeats the purpose of Debian stable, IMHO.